A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

Politics is the art of the possible.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.